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Business Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Times
Heman Chong at SAM: Monuments to memory and forgetting
[SINGAPORE] Heman Chong, Singapore's quintessential conceptual artist, finally gets the career look-back he deserves at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM). But instead of mounting a typical retrospective, he has given us a characteristically strange and open-ended interrogation into what we choose to remember, what we choose to forget, and the absurdities of living in a hyper-networked world that remembers everything and nothing at once. The show carries a long and unwieldy title taken off a Wikipedia disclaimer: This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. For Chong, incompleteness is not a failure but a principle to celebrate. His work thrives in grey zones: the unread book, the closed door, the footnote that never gets read. His installations sprawl across nine thematically curated rooms – Words, Whispers, Ghosts, Journeys, Futures, Findings, Infrastructures, Surfaces and Endings – and each one feels like you have stumbled into the dumping ground of the information age. Heman Chong's Monument to the people we've conveniently forgotten (I hate you) (2008) is a sea of one million blacked-out business cards. PHOTO: SINGAPORE ART MUSEUM / HEMAN CHONG Take Monument to the people we've conveniently forgotten (I hate you) (2008), for instance. It comprises one million – yes, one million – blacked-out business cards strewn across the floor. You can walk over them, lie on top of them, bathe in them, if you like – but you will never know who these business cards belonged to. It is a sea of forgotten names and unrealised connections turned into a playground of amnesia. If memory is a battleground, then The Library of Unread Books (2016-ongoing) is its cemetery. It is made up of hundreds of books donated by the public – books that were bought but never read by their owners. Together, they make up a collective confession of good intentions not followed through. It is less a library and more a mausoleum of curiosity, celebrating the gulf between acquiring knowledge and actually engaging with it. The Library Of Unread Books by Heman Chong and Renee Staal is made up of hundreds of books purchased by hundreds of people but never read. PHOTO: SINGAPORE ART MUSEUM / HEMAN CHONG And then there is Calendars (2020-2096) (2004-2010), where Chong presents 1,001 calendar pages featuring images of emptied public spaces in Singapore. The dates extend decades into the future, flirting with the absurdity of planning for a tomorrow that may never come. Though created before the pandemic, its depictions of vacant spaces eerily foreshadow the emptiness of Covid-19 lockdowns. There are several new commissions. Among them is Wanderlust / Rebecca Solnit (2025), an exceptionally beautiful addition to his Cover (Versions) series, where Chong re-imagines book covers for titles he has not yet read but intends to. Other works such as Emails From Strangers (kami coar) (2025) and Oleanders (2023-ongoing) similarly celebrate the forgotten, the unread, the unspoken. A spam e-mail from a stranger is memorialised in Heman Chong's work Emails From Strangers (kami coar) (2025) . PHOTO: SINGAPORE ART MUSEUM / HEMAN CHONG Curation by June Yap and Kathleen Ditzig is masterful, shaping a space that is both clinically sterile and invitingly immersive. The show simultaneously asks you to step in and stay away, look closer and look away, question everything you think you know – or ignore everything you see. Somewhere in Singapore, Chong – archivist, agitator, provocateur, prankster – is having a laugh. The exhibition runs at the Singapore Art Museum until Aug 17
Straits Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
Three Singapore artists earn posts at major international arts bodies
(From left) Ho Tzu Nyen, Ming Wong and Tang Fu Kuen have landed high-profile engagements in the international contemporary art scene. PHOTOS: SINGAPORE ART MUSEUM, THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON, THOR BRODRESKIFT SINGAPORE - A trio of Singaporean artists have landed high-profile engagements in the international contemporary art scene. Artist Ho Tzu Nyen has been appointed artistic director of the 16th edition of the Gwangju Biennale, to be held in the South Korean city in September and November 2026. The renowned contemporary arts event is the oldest biennale in Asia, founded in 1995. Ho, who participated in the 2018 edition and made a commissioned work for the 2021 edition, told The Straits Times that the appointment 'is a great honour and a great adventure'. The 49-year-old, who represented Singapore at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 and received a large-scale survey solo at the Singapore Art Museum in 2023, added: 'I hope to be able to give something back to this speciality which has contributed so much to both the history of democratic struggles in Asia, and also to the spirit of artistic enquiry and experimentation.' His appointment was announced on Apr 23 by acting president Lee Sang-Gap of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation. In a statement, the foundation cited Ho's research-based practice and engagement with Asian historical narratives as key factors in his selection. On the other side of the world, multidisciplinary artist Ming Wong started his stint as The National Gallery's first Singaporean artist-in-residence in March. The year-long residency at the London institution, in its fifth iteration, offers artists access to a studio as well as the Gallery's staff and collections. His work will also be displayed at the museum and a work produced during the residency will be acquired. The 53-year-old said in a statement: 'It's such an exciting time to be granted this opportunity to re-navigate myself in the journeys of European art as the National Gallery celebrates 200 years with a rehang of its collection. 'There isn't a better time to reimagine the stories that these characters and creatures inhabiting these worlds can tell one another, and their exchanges that cross centuries and civilisations beyond the frames.' Dramaturg and curator Tang Fu Kuen, 52, is one of the international judges for the Taishin Art Awards. The biggest contemporary art prize in Taiwan, sponsored by Taishin Bank, offers a NT$1.5 million (S$64,382.34) grand prize and an additional NT$1 million each for the visual arts and performing arts categories. Mr Tang said he and fellow judges are poring over submissions for the prize, due to be announced via livestream on May 24: 'We have three intense days of being locked up in the hotel to debate and give points.' The first foreigner to helm the Taipei Arts Festival in 2017, Mr Tang has served on multiple international art juries but he noted the rigour of the judging process in Taiwan: 'The accountability and transparency is insane. It's like sitting for exams!' He added: 'To return to Taiwan in this capacity is special to me. As I've oft-shared, Taiwan is the only truly horizontal society I've experienced where never once, in my years directing Taipei Arts Festival, was I asked to defend the function of art in society, or to define what contemporary art is/could be. 'It takes relentless work and years of many organisations and governance - including the high recognition conferred by Taishin Art Prize - for art to arrive at such an enlightened and celebrated level, to such an enlightened society.' Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
